GLOSSARY OF BASIC PHOTOGRAPHY TERMS

Below is a list of some common terms used frequently in the world of modern photography. If you’re new to photography, these have the potential to seem off-putting or might sound like gobbledygook when you run across them in reading or hear them mentioned casually. But if you take a minute to look over them now and refer back to this page when you’re stumped, we’re confident you’ll be calmly peppering your photography-oriented conversations with these terms in no time. If you think a term ought to be added to this list, please let us know through our ‘Ask a Question’ page.

AF: Autofocus.

Ambient light: Existing light–whether it’s from the sun or from electric lights, this is the light that’s already there, independent of any lighting effort on your part.

Aperture: A circular opening at the end of a lens that can be adjusted to control the amount of light that hits the image sensor or film in a camera.

ASA: In photography, this acronym refers to the ‘American Standards Association,’ a private, non-profit organization that used to determine the formulas that defined how sensitive film was to light, thereby determining its ’speed.’ The acronym is usually presented alongside a number, say, ASA 800, to designate film speed (see ‘film speed’). For all intents and purposes, ASA speed is the same as ISO speed.

Backlighting: Light that originates behind the subject of a photo. This could be done intentionally, or it could be that you’re taking a photo of someone who has the sun behind them. If you’re using an automatic setting on your camera, strong backlighting will often cause your main subject to be underexposed.

Bayonet: A lens-mounting mechanism that exactly aligns all optical, mechanical and electronic aspects of a lens to a camera body so that it will function properly.

Bracketing: Taking photos with exposure levels slightly above and below what you think are optimal levels for a shot. This is a safety measure many photographers use to be doubly certain they’ve captured the shot they need.

CCD: The acronym stands for ‘Charged Coupling Device.’ This is one of the two main types of sensors used in digital cameras. CCD sensors are frequently used in smaller cameras and in camcorders. Broadcast-quality video cameras are normally 3CCD cameras.

CMOS: The acronym stands for “Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor.” This is one of the two main types of sensors seen in digital cameras and is typically used in higher-end DSLRs.

CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black–these are the four colors of ink mixed together to produce the entire spectrum of colors in most newspapers and magazines. CMYK inks are also used by many photo printers.

CF: The acronym stands for ‘CompactFlash,’ which is a storage system capable of holding large amounts of information in small, lightweight, durable cards. CF cards have become a preferred method for storing photos in many professional, prosumer and consumer cameras.

Cropping: Selecting only a portion of the image, cutting out the unselected portions. This can be especially useful if there are distracting, unimportant elements you wish to remove from the edges of a photograph, or if you wish to resize a horizontal image so it appears vertical, or vice versa.

Digital Back: A device which allows an electronic sensor to attach to the back of a camera, allowing photographers to use cameras designed for film use to take digital images. Digital backs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and are normally used for high-end photography with medium- and full-format cameras.

Depth of field: This is used to describe the range or distance between the closest and the furthest elements of your photograph that remain in focus. A ’shallow’ or ‘limited’ depth of field would be one in which most elements appear out of focus, but your subject is in focus.

DSLR: The acronym stands for ‘Digital Single-Lens Reflex,’ and it describes a digital camera that functions using that mechanism. Light enters through the single lens and is reflected on two mirrors so photographers can look through the viewfinder to see what an image will look like. Pressing the shutter release button moves one mirror–which is attached to the shutter–out of the way, briefly exposing the digital sensor to light, capturing the image. Most professional photographers and many amateur and hobby photographers use DSLR cameras.

Film speed: This refers to the sensitivity level of film to light. The higher the ISO/ASA designation, the ‘faster’ the film is, since more sensitive film needs less exposure to light to capture an image.

FPS: The acronym stands for ‘Frames Per Second,’ and, shockingly, refers to how many photographs a camera can take per second. Some high-end professional DSLR cameras can take as many as 10 frames per second.

ISO: This stands for International Organization for Standardization. It’s not an acronym–ISO is the universal term for the organization, regardless of which language you speak, and is based on the Greek term ‘isos,’ which means ‘equal. In digital photography, ISO precedes a number to describe a setting determining how sensitive a camera’s sensor will be when a photo is taken. The ISO can be adjusted on DSLRs. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor will be to light, so while you might use ISO 100 on a bright, sunny day, you might need to use ISO 1600 or even higher when shooting in a dimly lit room.

JPEG: The acronym stands for ‘Joint Photographic Experts Group.’ Practically speaking, JPEG refers to a file type which connotes a method of compressing digital images. Most digital cameras record JPEG images, and you’ll find that most of the images you encounter on the Web are JPEG images as well.

Megapixel: One million pixels. A 12-megapixel camera has 12 million individual pixels on its sensor; a 6 megapixel camera has 6 million individual pixels on its sensor. Though megapixel count does indeed play an important part in producing quality images, the megapixel count has in many places been falsely portrayed as the ultimate measure of a camera’s worth.

Overexposed: This term is used to describe an image that was allowed to soak up too much light while being captured, and so appears washed out.

PhotoMechanic: A workflow program produced by Camera Bits designed to assist photographers who deal with large numbers of photos. The program helps them with importing, organizing, and selecting their images. For photographers who come back from, say, a football game and must quickly select 30 images from the 600 or more they’ve taken, PhotoMechanic and other, similar programs can be very useful.

Pixel: The absolute smallest individual unit of information in digital imaging. A single pixel is most often of microscopic size, and in fact there are dozens in each of the letters you are reading here. The word ‘pixel’ was coined in the 1960s and is intended to be a combination of the words ‘picture’ and ‘element.’

Pocket Wizard: A device that can send or receive a signal, allowing a photographer to sync external lights to go off when they press the shutter release button on their camera, or allowing them to operate a camera remotely.

Prosumer: This term is generally used to describe cameras that have professional-quality aspects but are marketed toward a consumer audience rather than toward full-time photography professionals. Some cameras in this category include the Canon 50D and the Nikon D90.

Raw or RAW: In photography, the term ‘raw,’ which some people occasionally capitalize for no reason whatsoever, refers to the almost wholly unprocessed data that comes from a digital camera’s sensor after a picture is taken. Many professional photographers prefer to record their images in raw format so they can have more freedom when editing them later on, since recording images as JPEGs sometimes limits the amount of editing that can be done. Most amateur or hobby photographers find they don’t need to shoot in raw mode in most cases. Each camera manufacturer has its own type of raw file–for example, Canon has CRW or CR2, Nikon has NEF, and Pentax has PEF. Adobe has produced an open standard called Digital Negative (DNG) to serve as an alternative when storing the images on a computer.

SLR: The acronym stands for ’single lens-reflex,’ and refers to the mechanism cameras in this category rely on. Light enters through the single lens and is reflected on two mirrors so photographers can look through the viewfinder to see what an image will look like. Pressing the shutter release button moves one mirror–which is attached to the shutter–out of the way, briefly exposing either the film or the digital sensor to light, capturing the image.

Underexposed: This term is used to describe an image that wasn’t allowed to soak up enough light while being captured, making it much darker than it should be.